shirsch
Veteran Member
I thought he threw a hissy fit over a rude FB user and stopped manufacturing them. Is that no longer the case?
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Best Mass Storage Solution for Apple //e Platinum?
- Thread starter onesimus
- Start date
VERAULT
Veteran Member
As the designer and builder of the item, hes entitled to his own beliefs and opinions. My advice to you is rather than talk about him.. Send him a message directly and talk to him.
I find the direct approach works better for me on most things anyway.
Real floppy drives are still widespread and much more cheaper than floppy partial emulators and I do recommend you to use physical fdds. Yes, I am skilled to maintain drives since my childhood, and I have plenty of DD diskettes and drives that were manufactured locally back then and I don't have a single floppy emulator in my possession and I don't miss them. If your apple2 has a cassette port I can recommend you to try contemporary loading of file based games with this http://asciiexpress.net/gameserver/readme.html
The process is almost as fast as from a real diskette drive.
There is certain charm in using real floppy drives.
For hard drives I am using cheap SCSI hard drives and SCSI controllers.
The process is almost as fast as from a real diskette drive.
There is certain charm in using real floppy drives.
For hard drives I am using cheap SCSI hard drives and SCSI controllers.
VERAULT
Veteran Member
I'm with you @george . I prefer Floppy disks myself. I Have plenty of them and plenty of disks. And yes, they can be had cheaply if you are willing to do your own cleaning and maintenance. But I also have emulation devices too because... you know... one day...
The device, the floppy emu is a godsend. I can use it on my Apple LISA, Apple ///, All my Apple II's and my early Macs.. So for repair work and testing its quite easy and I dont need to locate the nearest working floppy drive or get out the disks if I dont need to.
The device, the floppy emu is a godsend. I can use it on my Apple LISA, Apple ///, All my Apple II's and my early Macs.. So for repair work and testing its quite easy and I dont need to locate the nearest working floppy drive or get out the disks if I dont need to.
VERAULT
Veteran Member
The drives will.. The floppy disks will not. You CANNOT deny bit-rot. Whenever I am making a set of floppy disks for someone (most recently a c64) I always end up with at least a few more floppy disks in the trash because of mold and bit-rot... Yes the ones I have purchased which previous owners kept in better storage conditions will last longer... but even they have a shelf life.
onesimus
Experienced Member
I completely understand this perspective and actually do prefer it. I use authentic storage methods on my 5150 and this is the eventual goal for the Apple //e. Nothing quite like the floppy drive experience in my book, and it would be pure period technology unadulterated by devices which sometimes have multiple times the processing power from 50 years later.
shirsch
Veteran Member
And I never implied otherwise. I am not interested in owning one but had heard from *several* sources that weren't available anymore <shrug>.
onesimus
Experienced Member
that seems to be the case, I can't seem to find one from the "official" source.
VERAULT
Veteran Member
onesimus
Experienced Member
thanks. It's boiling down to a tough decision at this point. I wonder how much of the apple ii software ecosystem would be available to me if I just went with an original disk ii compared to the newer disk drive they had. I'll have to look into that since ultimately at the end of the day I do want to get original hardware, the newer hardware was just going to be a kind of holdover solution anyway. perhaps I should just go straight for the OG hardware.
skate323k137
Experienced Member
A disk II drive and ADTPro isn't a bad way to go at the end of the day, but, I have to backtrack because you said you are new (please don't take offense).
Why do you want mass storage on a IIe? While I find an internal/mass storage device all but a necessity on IIgs, most II/IIe stuff runs from 5.25 floppy anyway. A floppy emulator like the FloppyEMU will let you use the vast majority of the software on a IIe, and you can also copy it to real floppies from there. Even with just a Disk II or 5.25 card in the Apple II, you will get a lot of miles out of a FloppyEMU. And then if you do get a drive controller which supports smartport, it has that mode anyway.
I suppose what I am trying to say is for the majority of actual use cases/software on a IIe, a floppy emulator is more useful than mass storage (unless all you want to do is run Total Replay or something that's already an HDD image).
Why do you want mass storage on a IIe? While I find an internal/mass storage device all but a necessity on IIgs, most II/IIe stuff runs from 5.25 floppy anyway. A floppy emulator like the FloppyEMU will let you use the vast majority of the software on a IIe, and you can also copy it to real floppies from there. Even with just a Disk II or 5.25 card in the Apple II, you will get a lot of miles out of a FloppyEMU. And then if you do get a drive controller which supports smartport, it has that mode anyway.
I suppose what I am trying to say is for the majority of actual use cases/software on a IIe, a floppy emulator is more useful than mass storage (unless all you want to do is run Total Replay or something that's already an HDD image).
onesimus
Experienced Member
Really I was hoping to be able to store certain files like text files and other similar things like this. I only have the disk ii card so I can't really use the floppyemu for that (at least I don't think). I'm eventually looking at getting a iigs also so even if i wouldn't be using it as much as I think to store files on the apple ii I do believe I'd kinda need it for a iigs, as you've pointed out.
skate323k137
Experienced Member
Saving files to "disk" while using the FlippyEMU will put them into the image on the SD card. You can make youself a blank 140k disk image, or use an existing disk image with room.
That can be used on a modern computer a couple ways, either by mounting the image in an emulator, or extracting your individual files with a utility like CiderPress.
That can be used on a modern computer a couple ways, either by mounting the image in an emulator, or extracting your individual files with a utility like CiderPress.
onesimus
Experienced Member
I'll look into this further tomorrow, seems like last time I tried it wasn't cooperating very well because I could only have 1 disk loaded at a time with the disk ii card, so I couldn't have a blank disk + the program disk (which I couldn't seem to write to) loaded at the same time.
It's entirely possible I was doing something wrong though.
skate323k137
Experienced Member
It was common practice back then to eject the program disk and insert one to save to, so it's possible you can eject the program disk on the FloppyEMU and try this (assuming you have a rev B and not C. If you press the button as instructed on power up to change modes, and Dual 5.25 is an option, you have a Rev C and can just do that).
onesimus
Experienced Member
I do have a rev c, thankfully. I'm pretty sure I need the wire kit for dual 5.25, Regardless though I could do the first idea, for some reason that hadn't occurred to me *facepalm*. A real apple ii noob moment. I do believe that will pretty much do what I need it to do then without even having to buy anything! Thanks a lot for that!